Food priming and short-term retention in the delayed alternation task

The delayed alternation task, with rats as subjects, was used to assess the effects of a priming food reward on subsequent retention of a reinforced target location in a T maze. Subjects received a pretrial feeding, followed by a forced-choice rewarded entry into one goal box of the maze (the “cuing” run). Following a delay interval (5–60 s), the subjects were allowed to choose either goal, with reward available only in the one not entered on the cuing run. Priming significantly reduced such alternation after 30- and 60-s delays (Experiment 1), whereas administering the reward following the cuing run had no effect on choice behavior (Experiment 2). In the third study, prefeeding had a decremental effect when the following cuing run was reinforced, but no decrement occurred when reinforcement was omitted on the cuing run. The results suggest that food reward enhances retention of spatial information, but priming reduces this effect.